Scaling

Here you’ll find some great examples of Social Innovation from Northern Ireland and around the world.

To help you, we’ve split them up into the different stages of the Social Innovation Cycle.

Scaling

At this stage there are a range of strategies for growing and spreading an innovation – from organisational growth, through licensing and franchising to federations and looser diffusion. Emulation and inspiration also play a critical role in spreading an idea or practice.

Demand matters as much as supply: how market demand, or demand from commissioners and policy makers is mobilised to spread a successful new model.

Fairphone, a company launched in 2013 who make the world’s most ‘ethical’ smartphone, is the best example of how social innovations can be brought to scale.

They started in 2010 as an awareness raising campaign about conflict minerals and their uses within industry and consumer products. Rather than incorporate as a private company, they are a social enterprise, have over 50 employees in 25 countries and have sold over 100,000 phones, including 25,000 before one had even been built.

Their company and products are based around 4 very simple principles: Long Lasting Design, Fair Materials, Good Working Conditions and, Reuse and Recycling.

Along the way is transparency about where and how each phone is built, how much it costs, who makes money from it, how everyone along the supply chain is treated and how the company itself operates.

Whilst not able to compete with Apple and Samsung (yet), Fairphone shows how simple, social innovations can be brought to scale and start to achieve real systemic and societal change.